Tharine

Old thread is old. A lot of things have happened since this post went up, but we're properly getting things under way for Revision 22 now and i'm simultaneously bumping this and moving this thread over to the Mod Chat Private section of the forums. If you would like to keep yourself completely unspoiled as to the design of Revision 22 - stop reading now, we're going to be discussing it in it's entirety from here on out! It’s clearly important to highlight where everything is at with the upcoming revision, as things are a bit all over the place in terms of what’s progressed since I initially made this thread, and we need to kind of reign it in now that we have the ability to work on the actual map itself. I’ve recently updated the results from the poll/discussion thread I made on the forums a few weeks ago, and you can find this here. I’ve noted what things we look like we’ll definitely be going with from that poll, and what things we cannot at this stage include (whether because of high discontent (i.e. ‘no, I would not like this’-type votes), or because responses were mixed, or because we lack the feasibility to include it, etc.), but it’s more in-depth in that post, so please go ahead and read that for better detail. I’ve spent whatever odd moments in my spare time looking into potential seeds for the new revision’s map, and i’ve asked totemo to set up the one that Draykhar and I both took the most interest in (out of a narrowed down three selections I had initially made) for us to get ready to put in the spawn, roads, and arenas, etc. It's up on event.nerd.nu at the moment, so if you would like to help out and you're not already on the whitelist (not sure if it would've been changed from the CTF planning) and would like to help out, please let us know here (rather than somewhere like IRC or in-game). I think the map for this one is pretty remarkable in terms of some of the land generation it’s produced, so if you’re keen to help get things set up on the new map - whilst you shouldn’t be exploring the map just to take a gander at it anyway - I would advise keeping your eyes focused on what you’re working on so that you don’t spoil yourself on how nice some of the land looks. I would also like to properly say that I would love input from anyone on staff in putting together this revision. Moderator and admin numbers have dwindled significantly this past revision for Survival, and with Draykhar on vacation at the moment, i'm the only Survival admin that's properly available right now. One thing I would definitely love as much input as possible on is the designs i'll be discussing in my comment below, as that definitely requires more opinions than just my own. I would also like to thank the couple of staff members that have already contacted me with their offers to help in any way they can with setting this revision up - I really appreciate it :)

Hey mc_swagger, Your old appeal is here and it seems I set the ban length of 6 weeks way back in April, so that time has definitely come and gone. Just as a heads up, we're kind of in the midst of transitioning over to the 1.6 Minecraft update, so all of our servers are currently on 1.5.2 and i'd recommend checking out the subreddit for better/more up to date information in regards to that. That said, you're unbanned, welcome back Ban reason, for future reference: Ban for mc_swagger on c.nerd.nu for Xray nerd.nu/appeal by Tharine on 2013-04-10 00:53:02 (no more bans, 1 notes)

As for the final two pieces of feedback, i'd like to thank everyone for providing their responses for that, even if it seemed a bit at odds with the rest of the questions. Figuring out what times work best for particular people for events has always been a bit of a struggle personally speaking, as i'm based in Australia and as such I live and play the game at quite different times to a lot of our playerbase. As well it was good to see what kind of statistics we had from Survival players in what MCPublic services they make use of. For continuity, here are the screenshots of the responses for those two questions: I'd like to thank everyone that participated in the poll for providing their input on issues that pertain to the upcoming revision and what changes we're looking to make in regards to that. As well as continuing the discussion of the more contentious results we've found, i'd like to hear feedback on how we can better our methods of gathering input from players, as this is the first time i've constructed something like this and I already know of a few ways that I could have written this up better.

Given the responses for this one, I think it's pretty safe to say we'll be going ahead with bringing on board the Enchantism plugin next revision. There already exists a thread for discussing the plugin here, and i've bumped the thread with some questions to prompt further discussion of this particular plugin now that we've seen that a lot of people are quite interested in it. At an immediate glance, it appears that the 'yes' votes for this are the runaway winner of the poll. However, looking much more closely, it can be seen that the combination of 'undecided' and 'no' votes almost stand up to the number of yes votes. I would like to say that we're going ahead with implementing this plugin, but i'm going to be setting up a separate thread for this topic so that I can go into much greater detail about what it will entail and meet the concerns that people might have over this. I know that Draykhar has been handling the villager trading decisions moreso than I, so I will be getting into contact with him if I can and making sure I get my details correct for said post. I'll see if I have the time to get this set up sometime within this week.

It appears that the majority of responses were indeed in favour of implementing a plugin that would allow new players a sort of 'grace period' that would protect them from combat whilst they get settled into the map. Draykhar and I have looked at the config settings for this, and admittedly i'm going to have to get him to remind me what kind of time frame we felt would be most appropriate for this (i'll edit/update this post when he does, if he doesn't comment himself). The plugin we proposed also provides the option of protection upon respawn, which is something we were considering as well in an attempt to combat spawncamping. We assessed this in regards to the spawn of Revision 21 and determined that X seconds would give you enough time to run to the outer area of spawn without being killed, but once you hit the road region using the fastest method possible, you would be free to be killed again. I'd like to see how people feel about this idea, in addition to the other topics that require further discussion. In regards to the first-join PvP protection alone, I would like to say that we will go ahead with this in the upcoming revision, but I would like to hear the opinions of the people that stated they would not like to see this implemented, as I feel that it's important to address what concerns you might have about this plugin. Thoughts are still very mixed on the idea of implementing a duelling plugin for Survival, something which was brought up initially about 6 months ago. There has for a long time existed a thread for discussing this plugin, so if you honestly have an interest in seeing this implemented, or you have reasons as to why you would not like to see it implemented, please make your thoughts known here. At this stage, we cannot implement any kind of duelling plugin as there has been too little discussion of it to progress forward.

Onto the questions regarding plugins! Another very interesting difference of opinion in regards to bringing in an enderpearl cooldown plugin. Similar to the topic of base camping, I would like to encourage greater discussion of this one as we cannot make any appropriate decision when the votes are so evenly split. It seems that a great majority of respondents are interested in seeing a more hands-on combat logging plugin brought into play, although there are definitely several people who are either undecided or would not like to see such a plugin implemented. Given the lead in votes, I would like to say that we will be going ahead with at the very least trialling one of the plugins previously proposed to handle this, with the idea in mind that if it turns out to be something that is not suited to our community, that we can certainly change it or remove it altogether. I will work on discussing an appropriate config for this with Draykhar when I have the opportunity and we'll see how soon we can get this set up on the upcoming revision.

Now, given that i've heard only negative individual feedback on the current status of base camping throughout this past revision, I was admittedly quite shocked to see the difference in opinion on whether or not we should be enforcing rules on such an issue. It seems that thoughts on the matter are quite clearly divided, so what do we do when opinions are so evenly split? I think it's time to open up discussion on the reasons as to why we should or shouldn't be enforcing rules on base camping, and see if we can come to some kind of conclusion that works out for the better of the community as a whole.

It seems that the majority of responses for the question pertaining to land claims were that people had interest in some form of stricter handling of land claims, but they would rather wait until a formal proposal is made. There was a definite mixture of suggestions on how people would personally like to see land claims handled (thanks for that solid input, Unce ), so i'll try to restructure the proposal I laid out initially to best reflect the feedback we got. Going for a steps-based procedure: Relinquishing land claims will be handled on a request-based system, but requests for land with not be accepted prior to the second week of the new revision. Requests must be made through the /modreq system, and players must clearly indicate which claim they are interested in overtaking by standing in front of/inside/next to it when making the modreq and including the name of the claim owner (if their name is known). We will not relinquish existing buildings to other players, only land claims that appear to be going unused. The main reasoning behind this being that no one would enjoy, say, coming back from vacation or an extended period of no free time only to find their house now belongs to someone else who was able to be online in the time that they were not. We would not like to impose requirements on players that they inform us of their being absent in order to secure their land claim, so this is one point i'm pretty keen on sticking with. Following the submission of the modreq, a staff member will assess the current situation, including: Whether it appears that the claim is in use. Whether the claim owner is currently active/banned for a significant duration of time (i.e. banned for a month or longer). If it appears that the claim is not being made use of, then the staff member will go about contacting the land owner to inquire whether they intend to make use of their claimed land. The person being contacted will also be given a particular time frame to respond by before action may be taken on their land. For the sake of consistency, we can organise having a forum thread for all staff to easily see what requests currently exist/have been handled already and in the event that there is no response from the player contacted or they continue to not use their claimed land despite requests we can talk as a collective staff group on whether it would be fair per individual case to relinquish the land. To spur on discussion on this, how does this setup sound? What kind of time frame should we be providing players to respond within, and should it be longer/shorter depending on the current stage of the revision? From the responses you've now seen from other players, are there any ideas in there that you would like to incorporate into this design? The proposed design is kind of the bare basics of handling relinquishing claims, so ideas such as using protections to mark land claims or requiring that claims be marked with names of their owners can easily be incorporated into how we deal with land claims as a whole.

I actually intended to get the results of this poll put up a couple of weeks ago, but in hindsight it appears that finding myself distracted by other tasks has actually allowed a decent amount more people to get their responses in prior to review! With that said, at current there have been 58 responses in total to the poll. I cannot say for certain whether such a number represents our Survival community as a whole, but I feel confident in saying that it represents a decent chunk of the active community. While we won’t rule out any further responses for consideration (although certainly by this time I feel that most interested players have already provided their opinions), now is definitely a good time to assess what we’ve heard back so far. The responses in full can be found by going here, however I will be including a screenshot for each accompanying description of the results for easier reading/viewing. (Sidenote: Seems you have a limit on the number of images you can include in a comment on these forums, so i’ll be sectioning off the results to account for this) Given what’s happened between now and the creation of this poll, I feel it’s pretty safe to say that the questions pertaining to Revision 21’s state are no longer applicable. Events in both mine and Draykhar’s personal lives kept us incredibly busy in the lead up to the end of the revision, and we ended up having to work around that, as well as things such as the 1.6 update and the planned CTF event, in getting things together in the end. For the sake of it though, here’s what the responses to those questions looked like: Responses in regards to the fate of Revision 22 were quite similar, and it was interesting to see the mixed views surrounding the idea of a chaotic interlude. Given the circumstances, we ended up going ahead with the miniature chaos event (which is still ongoing, we'll commence the third round pretty soon, keep an eye on the subreddit for information regarding this). Here are the responses for these two topics:

To prompt further discussion on this, a couple questions for everyone to consider: Should we scale level costs accordingly with something like the level of enchant you have available to select from? i.e. Protection IV would cost you 30 levels, so should III cost 25, II cost 20, and I cost 10 levels, for example? Do you have any of your own ideas for how we could handle level 'prices'? What interest is there in including the options for enchants that you typically would not be able to get? The way the UI is set up, levels for each enchant can go up to IV (sidenote: If you want V for something you might need to enchant it on a book first or combine two IV enchants, perhaps an appropriate price to pay for being able to choose your enchant?) so that means enchantments such as Knockback IV and Punch IV could be available. Is that something people are interested in having implemented, and if so, how should we handle 'costs' of having something like this made available in the realm of otherwise vanilla-available enchants?

Unbanned, welcome back

Hey N00ble, i'm really glad that you've gone ahead and looked at what I said in Abiuv's appeal, as my response was going to be pretty much exactly the same. For the sake of clarity, and for future reference, i'll just copy what I said in Abiuv's appeal (edited to reflect that i'm now addressing you, of course): This came prior to the initial concerns made by the player in question, but I thought it worth mentioning your actions here, as a start. In doing this, you are very clearly mocking another player's previous, very legitimate concerns of harassment that take place on our servers. You are actively ensuring that this player's worries are treated with the least amount of concern by the rest of the community by blasting their every day conversations as an open avenue to being accused of harassment, when that's not the case at all. We shouldn't be shaping our community to ignore the genuine concerns of others like this - you're essentially setting up a 'boy who cried wolf' scenario on that individual's behalf, and you're erring uncomfortably close to the line of bullying with how yourself and the other player target this individual. This continued further, as evident by this set of logs. It's honestly incredibly disappointing to see this kind of behaviour from not one but two individuals on our server. Making light of harassment in such a way would have warranted me speaking with both of you to cut this sort of thing out before it escalated into actual harassment, but as it usually goes, this hadn't come to my attention until after such a thing had happened. To continue, this is the particular incident that lead to both yours and Abiuv's ban, and the extension of such behaviour here only solidified my reasoning. Replace '12 year old' with 'female', and you know damn well that would have earned you an instant kick/ban from the servers. People will have no issue pulling the trigger on such a ban because sexism is both more easily identifiable and more clearly discriminative in such a context than ageism is, but that doesn't mean we're going to hesitate on acting on such an issue when it's brought to our attention at a later stage. I know full well that as a young person on the internet you need a hard shell to put up with the barrage of crap that comes your way based on your age alone, but that doesn't mean we're going to let such behaviour go unmoderated on our servers because it's what's expected and celebrated in other areas online. This is supposed to be an open and welcoming community, and discrimination has no place here. I've spoken with the player in question about their use of sexist language towards yourself, and i've made it very clear that we won't tolerate that sort of thing either. The fact that none of the people involved in this situation thought to take the higher road and recognise that this kind of behaviour is appalling absolutely shocks me. It's the internet and Minecraft is just a game, but you lot need to stop being such assholes to each other and you certainly need to cut out the discrimination and harassment on all sides. You're all conscious individuals with the capacity to make your own decisions, and it disappoints me that none of you put that ability to good use and just quit it when things got out of hand. It shouldn't get to the point that a staff member here has to step in and hold your hands and guide you through the steps it takes to be an actual human being to one another. As you've gone ahead and already spoken your part on what I asked of Abiuv, i'll simply say the same in that I hope to see you continue the mindset you've displayed in your appeal on your return to the servers, and I hope not to see you in this section of the forums again. With that said, you're unbanned.

Thank you, i'd like to see you continue from here on out with that in mind. You're unbanned, I really hope that there won't be any reason for you to end up in this section of the forums again.

Hey Abiuv, in the interest of both fairness and because I honestly don't have the time to expend on things like this any more, i've readied a response to yours and N00ble_6's appeal and they will be worded pretty much the same. Your ban did indeed come from harassing that other player. I've since redacted their name from your comment on their behalf, as I am unsure of how comfortable they would be having their name made public with such an issue, as is often the case with harassment bans. All of the players involved know who took part in this, so it's of no harm to us to redact the name of the person it affected. This came prior to the initial concerns made by the player in question, but I thought it worth mentioning your actions here, as a start. In doing this, you are very clearly mocking another player's previous, very legitimate concerns of harassment that take place on our servers. You are actively ensuring that this player's worries are treated with the least amount of concern by the rest of the community by blasting their every day conversations as an open avenue to being accused of harassment, when that's not the case at all. We shouldn't be shaping our community to ignore the genuine concerns of others like this - you're essentially setting up a 'boy who cried wolf' scenario on that individual's behalf, and you're erring uncomfortably close to the line of bullying with how yourself and the other player target this individual. This continued further, as evident by this set of logs. It's honestly incredibly disappointing to see this kind of behaviour from not one but two individuals on our server. Making light of harassment in such a way would have warranted me speaking with both of you to cut this sort of thing out before it escalated into actual harassment, but as it usually goes, this hadn't come to my attention until after such a thing had happened. To continue, this is the particular incident that lead to both yours and N00ble_6's ban, and the extension of such behaviour here only solidified my reasoning. Replace '12 year old' with 'female', and you know damn well that would have earned you an instant kick/ban from the servers. People will have no issue pulling the trigger on such a ban because sexism is both more easily identifiable and more clearly discriminative in such a context than ageism is, but that doesn't mean we're going to hesitate on acting on such an issue when it's brought to our attention at a later stage. I know full well that as a young person on the internet you need a hard shell to put up with the barrage of crap that comes your way based on your age alone, but that doesn't mean we're going to let such behaviour go unmoderated on our servers because it's what's expected and celebrated in other areas online. This is supposed to be an open and welcoming community, and discrimination has no place here. I've spoken with the player in question about their use of sexist language towards N00ble_6, and i've made it very clear that we won't tolerate that sort of thing either. The fact that none of the people involved in this situation thought to take the higher road and recognise that this kind of behaviour is appalling absolutely shocks me. It's the internet and Minecraft is just a game, but you lot need to stop being such assholes to each other and you certainly need to cut out the discrimination and harassment on all sides. You're all conscious individuals with the capacity to make your own decisions, and it disappoints me that none of you put that ability to good use and just quit it when things got out of hand. It shouldn't get to the point that a staff member here has to step in and hold your hands and guide you through the steps it takes to be an actual human being to one another. That said, your ban is not going to be a long one should you fully recognise that we will absolutely not tolerate this nonsense from yourself or anyone else on these servers. I've provided the evidence and reasoning behind your ban, and i'll await a response from you before continuing with your appeal.

Hey Permah, Your ban was mostly just so we could make sure there was a proper understanding on the rules about combat logging. Your ban came from this incident: http://paste.thezomg.com/10241/32355711/ wherein you logged out right about the time another player hit you, as tagged by our logging detection plugin, which shows: 2013-06-23 10:08:53 | Permah lost connection: disconnect.quitting 2013-06-23 10:08:53 | NoLog: Permah logged on shanty_sniper, seconds: 0 ,distance: 2 Meaning that you logged out 0 seconds after and 2 blocks distance away from shanty_sniper after being struck. I just wanted to be sure that we were clear on the fact that logging out to avoid PvP encounters is still against the rules, no matter if you've been directly struck. You made a point to say that you still had full health upon logging out, which tells me that you were indeed aware of shanty being there and made the conscious decision to exit the game. This still constitutes as combat logging, as you are logging out to avoid the combat that is about to take place. I'll only ask that you respond here so that I know you've read what I have to say, and either myself or another moderator will go about unbanning you (whoever sees your response first). You're also more than welcome to use this space to ask any questions you have about the combat logging rule, and i'll do my best to try and answer them as soon as possible.

Hey chezburgers54, your ban is indeed just so we can settle an understanding of the rules of PvP logging, as it's become apparent that this wasn't really made clear in your appeal for the previous incidents. To yourself and other moderators (should there be any further issues down the line that require moderating, hopefully not), this ban shouldn't count as a further offence against the rules, so please don't take it as such. I don't have the time myself to dedicate to catching you in-game, nor can I have you running around on Survival with a misunderstanding of the rules in mind, so this ban's just for everyone's convenience in handling this. I know that when described as 'pvp logging' it can tend to give off the impression that it's only against the rules when you're in direct combat, but that's not the case. A better way to look at it might be to understand that 'logging off to avoid pvp encounters' is against the rules. So if someone is approaching you in order to kill you, even if they haven't landed a hit, it's still against the rules as you are logging to avoid the combat that was about to take place. I'll only ask that you comment back here when you understand how we handle this rule and either myself or another moderator (whoever sees your response first) will go right ahead and unban you. If you need any further clarification or have questions surrounding logging to avoid combat, you're more than welcome to ask away as well.

Putting this in Mod Chat because it's important for the players to be aware of where we all stand, but it's not really something we have the time to leave up to thorough discussion - what are each of the servers doing when the 1.6 update comes out? Survival's transitioning between revisions, and we'll be looking to start Revision 22 only after our CraftBukkit setup and essential plugins are updated for 1.6 (to players: i'm working on an update/announcement post at current for more stuff related to this, stay tuned!). We're planning to perhaps hold our end of revision chaos the day prior to the release of 1.6 (not confirmed yet, need to speak with the other S admins still), but after that we're at a bit of a standstill on planning what's available for players in that plugin-update limbo that will exist between the end of our Revision 21 and the beginning of 22. Usually we'd get chaos.nerd.nu set up, but i'm of the understanding that neither PvE nor Creative are as close to a new revision as Survival is, so this might not be something we go with this time? We can work on getting some kind of 1.5-based events going on s.nerd.nu in that inbetween period, but I don't want to go ahead on formally developing or announcing such plans without seeing where the other two servers stand on the approach to 1.6. So, to the PvE and Creative admins, please think about your plans for the upcoming update and get back to us here (not in IRC, please!) to help us Survival staff out a bit. Thank you in advance

Hey Ryan700123, apologies that your ban wasn't caught a bit sooner. It appears from our end that your account was more than likely compromised at some point, which what probably lead to your ban from our servers. I'll only go ahead and ask that you ensure that your account is now secure (I would recommend changing your password, if you have not done so already quite recently) before joining our servers once again. I've gone ahead and unbanned you however, so welcome back ----- Ban for Ryan700123 on c.nerd.nu for griefing, hacked client nerd.nu/appeal by meno123 on 2011-11-26 22:25:09 (no more bans, no notes)

Hey bloodpig115, apologies that your ban appeal slipped passed us a bit. It looks like your ban was only for minor griefing on our Survival server in November of last year. If you don't recall visiting our servers, I would recommend ensuring that your account is secure before returning. I've gone ahead and unbanned you however, so welcome back ----- Ban for bloodpig115 on c.nerd.nu for minor grief on S nerd.nu/appeal by Taker337 on 2012-11-12 19:57:49 (no more bans, no notes)

Hey dobreira, I think it's pretty clear from your previous bans that you should know the full extent of the rules by now. Your ban for the minecart spam came only seconds after myself and several of the other players in the area put in the effort to remove the mess caused by one of our acquaintances doing the very same. I had made it incredibly clear to the entire Mumble channel that we were in that spamming minecarts can cause lag, and yet you spent the time to set up a dispenser and accompanying redstone clock to dispense a bunch of minecarts automatically. I issued your ban from our IRC because it would delay the ban until you next left the game - done so because I (correctly) anticipated the outcry that would come from you in Mumble for what was a very legitimate ban. You were later kicked from the game by another moderator after you continued building redstone clock devices in an attempt to spam entities. Following your ban, you continued to bother me about it in the Mumble, something you know full well is inappropriate. Your behaviour on the servers, as well as the Mumble, has continued its slow but steady pace of inappropriate. You push the limit on things far too often, and you need to better recognise these limits and respect them - not try to stand as close as possible whilst remaining within the rules. I feel it inappropriate to issue a lengthy ban for something such as entity spam, but it's very clear that you still have issues respecting the rules we put in place here. Were it my final say, i'd consider this one of your, if not very, last chances at returning to these servers. I'd strongly recommend a several month ban for any incidents you manage to put yourself into in the future. Take this unban and play as though it's your last opportunity to remain a member here. ------ Ban for dobreira on c.nerd.nu for Minecart spam (Warning for this issued to entire channel in Mumble only a minute prior) by Tharine on 2013-06-18 02:16:01 (no more bans, 4 notes)

Another side question - are admins able to monitor the entire CTF chat all at once? I understood this might have been the case with the last CTF, where admins were able to monitor chat from all four teams instead of just their own, and I had been curious if that was true/if the same would be true again this time around. If yes, would there be any way to opt out of that at all? I trust myself not to act upon information picked up from the other team's chat, but it ruins the fun of it a bit to know that I would have such easy access to the information there. If the answer's no, that's brilliant and I have no more concerns regarding that :P

Whilst I understand the allure of being able to start on the new map readily prepared with your remnants from the old world - I think we're going to stick pretty close to our namesake and say that no, it's not in the spirit of 'Survival' to start anywhere but from scratch when we start up the new rev.

Hey nerd323, I was actually your banning moderator (not Ozomahtlii). I do apologise if this ban was made in error, it did indeed look like you continued to spam carts even after two warnings for both you and your companion to stop. I'll go ahead and unban you now, but please be more considerate in the future of what people are warning you about and that our actions are genuine, and not jump to accusations that this is abuse of mod powers.

Honestly, feel free to bug us to do an alts check via IRC. It's one command and takes at most maybe 5 seconds of our time. For me personally, if i'm in-game or in Mumble, i'm also in IRC and you're welcome to poke me for an alts check whenever.

Hey chezburgers54, i'm glad that you've taken some time away from the servers and reflected upon this. Your ban came after several warnings from staff to stop with the chat spam, at one stage you were also muted (if I recall correctly). You know what you did that was wrong, I think that's pretty clear, so i'm going to go ahead and unban you now. In the future, please try to exercise more control over your actions. Unbanned, welcome back.